A mobile terminal has been known which automatically performs positioning and which reports a measured location to a service provider. The mobile terminal may perform the positioning by using GPS. The service provider includes a content provider and a telecommunications carrier.
In order to achieve electric power saving, the mobile terminal detects a continuous walking state, and detects switching of a sector. Specifically, the mobile terminal detects the continuous walking state by an acceleration sensor, and the mobile terminal detects the switching of the sector by area information from a base station. By detecting the continuous walking state and the switching of the sector, a determination can be made as to whether the mobile terminal is moving or stationary. When the determination is made that the mobile terminal is moving, the mobile terminal performs positioning at every predetermined period, and reports a location to the service provider.
Regarding the mobile terminal, a technique has been known such that, for a case where the mobile terminal is not stationary but frequent retrieval of location information is not required, power consumption is reduced by lowering a frequency of retrieving location information (e.g., Patent Document 1).